Listening to Heather Bambrick on Jazz.fm this morning I learned that the time to process a visa application for performers has doubled and that to get an expedited visa now costs $2,800, limiting the ability of musicians to schedule tours in the US.
I have such a hard time even finding a jazz club, learning that now we can’t even get musicians just makes me even sadder.
Has nothing to do with the cost of a visa and even if it were, we have plenty of great home grown musicians. The lack of Jazz clubs is due to a lack of interest and profitability.
At 'Seasons 52' a restaraunt nearby there was a live piano player in the middle of the circular bar. It was fantastic to sit and have a cocktail and listen to live music. One day I walked in and the piano had been replaced with a new lighted display of their liqueur collection. Grey Goose sitting on top.
I got the manager and asked why did you do this? He said "we are highlighting the product we sell. We don't sell music we sell liqueur."
It wasn't about the cost of the piano player who was paid mostly by tips. It was about maximizing profit. The bar is now filled with a different crowd. Younger, affluent group starring at their cell phones. Trying to impress each other buying the most expensive on display. They couldn't care less about live music.
We used to make regular trips to Yoshi's in Oakland, surely one of the nicest venues for live Jazz in the US. They featured top-tier players and had been in existence since 1979. The audience was composed of mostly older couples.
At some point, they abruptly abandoned Jazz and changed the format to what is, I suppose, contemporary R&B. No doubt, they are attracting larger crowds, now but what a disappointment for Jazz fans.
Sadly I have to agree with @gdaddy1. In the fifty-sixties, there were a bunch of clubs. And slowly one by one they closed. I believe we still have one jazz and one blues club left.
Yeah, but the reason for the lack of jazz clubs is that rock n' roll took over the audience back in the 50's and never relinquished it. Elvis changed things. The Beatles changed things.
You would be hard pressed to get an answer of who their favorite jazz artist is you if asked anyone under the age of 60. I am 60 and I would say Gary Clark Jr. :)
While the OP specifically mentions jazz clubs, the visa cost applies to all entering musicians and artists. If you understand economic supply and demand, then added costs to entry will lessen the demand for visas. Less artist will come to the US. Additionally, other actions taken by the US government have resulted in an overall decline in foreigners visiting with artists and musicians being a small part.
The average American under a certain age has zero interest in live music. Combine this with sky-high ticket prices that 99% cannot afford and America's belief that greed is more important than art, and voila, you get no more venues.
I'm sure greed plays a role but even that aside everything is expensive these days and there is a lot of competition for people's entertainment dollars. Streaming alone provides unlimited content these days at the expense of alternatives like going to live events. The world is always changing. Count on that!
While the cost and hassle of getting a visa obviously didn't have anything to do with the decreased interest in jazz, you can reasonably expect it likely to have impact on the future of musicians ability or desire to perform internationally.
We just returned from a trip to Spain. We overheard 3-4 conversations of other tourists who said they would not visit the US. My wife had a conversation with 3 middle-aged women who had planned a trip to Miami until stories of visitors being hassled, held for days before being deported and so on. Instead they went to the south of Spain. If you check the numbers, tourism to the US is way down. Will really hurt South Florida, NYC and California. Palm Springs, CA, in particular, already is feeling the pain as thousands of Canadians who go there to warm up in the winter cancelled their trips. Hassling musicians and artists is just a subset of our new attitude towards our friends who want to visit.
I believe the fees went up in April 2024 and it is a shame as most of the musicians I would like to see come from the UK and Ireland. I recall talking to a musician from Ireland maybe ten years ago and he said the reason he did fewer tours in the US but longer tours was because of the pain of getting all the paperwork in place and once here he was going to tour as long as allowed.
@evanpress- Weird and creepy how this went sideways. I personally want a very efficient government. Visas, taxes, mail. I want it to be fast and go smooth and the last thing I want is idiot with a badge at the border hassling people based on his/her personal prejudices.
Good post, @erik_squires. Many of the greatest musicians, whether jazz, classical, rock, are in Europe, Asia, South America, Australia. True that there’s little interest in great music in the USA and that $ greed trumps art almost always. Still, the niche of sophisticated listeners and musicians exists and to have both cheated of their enjoyment and livelihood due to bureaucratic nonsense demeans us all -- and just makes America more mediocre.
I wonder if Russians in the 1930s were accused of Stalin Derangement Syndrome? Or Duarte Derangement Syndrome in the Phillipines? Or Orbanitis in Hungary?
It is a nice, lazy way to minimize authoritarianism, I'll give you that.
@hifiguy42 To give you a heads up Stalin was a monster that let millions starve to death and sent armies with pitchforks to fight the Nazis or get shot by their own.
Duarte was small potatoes it was the Marcos' which ran the Philipines and are still running the Philipines.
If you really compare these monsters to Trump you are another terminal patient of TDS. The major symptom is total disregard of factual evidence and addictive watching of The View and having unclean thoughts about Whoopi Goldberg.
@hifiguy42, it would be easier to teach a pig to sing than to teach lord snowflake anything. Lord snowflake's mother still cannot get him out of her basement.
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